If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

The section quoted is about propriety in worship, and I’ve read several translations and heard it “interpreted” many ways. My point is not about long hair and who should pray. What I find interesting is that in verse 16 Paul appeals to orthodoxy (or orthopraxy) in order to justify his position. In verse 14 he appeals to “the very nature of things” (NIV) to justify short-haired men and long-haired women. Now, I know that there’s much more going on here than a discussion of hairstyles. What I’m pointing out is that Paul appeals to common sense and the practice of all other churches to settle a dispute.

So why don’t we? Protestants simply form a new denomination – the “Short-haired Women Church of God”. I’m wondering how we will justify these divisions in the end. Paul goes on in verses 18 & 19:

In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval.

Paul doesn’t elaborate on how the differences will show God’s approval. I for one would love to know that.

I know I am.

Actually, I guess I have an ongoing reaction to what I perceive as the sterility and western rationalism of the Protestant movement. This is an interesting problem to have when you’re as deep into apologetics and reason as I am. I used to revile C.S. Lewis as a sterile rationalist who sought to remove the mystery from the faith.

Then I read him. Funny, how so much has been written and discussed about what he actually believed, in terms of the Protestant/Catholic axis. I find myself drawn to Orthodoxy and it’s powerful spiritual tradition, I have some history there and I still maintain that Orthodox Liturgical music is as close as we will get on Earth to hearing choirs of Angels. I still have some serious issues with Roman Catholic doctrine. I attend an Evangelical Protestant church with roots directly in the great revivals of the last two centuries. I’m reading the Philokalia.

My objection is over the idea of randomness itself. What we do not understand, we tend to call “random”, “chaotic” or “accidental”. I’m not a Deist, but I do believe that God generally lets His design run it’s course. Intervention isn’t necessary because it was perfectly designed in the first place. That’s not to say that He doesn’t intervene at times, just that it wasn’t required by the design. What appears random to us is really just beyond our comprehension. The roll of a die can be calculated according to the laws of physics given near perfect knowledge – without knowledge of physics and mechanics it would be impossible. Is it therefore random?

Perhaps it comes down to time and our place in the flow of it. I had a professor once who challenged my statement that God is outside of Time. I’m not sure that he was serious, but it did make me think about the implications and meaning of such a statement. I guess I don’t believe in randomness, just limits in our ability to see causes and consequences.

Also, I always hated studying probability theory. I suppose in some ways it was/is interesting, but I just couldn’t ever wrap my head around it.

Now, I only heard part 3 of this 4 part series, but it was certainly difficult for me to separate Stuart’s obvious challenge to Naturalism from an attack on the principles of Evolutionary Theory. I will only say that I feel even more that we need to be clear about challenging and refuting Naturalism and Materialism without rejecting good science. God is not threatened by discovery of truth, why should we fear reason? We should certainly challenge ideas that go beyond the evidence, but let’s be careful not to create ludicrous or foolish explanations for ideas that are not, in themselves, anti-Christian.

Stuart did make a very cool point about religion and violence: 130 million people (at minimum) were killed in the 20th century by or in the name of Atheistic regimes. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, the Khmer Rouge, and on it goes. Religious conflict has never come close to that level of killing, so what do we make of the claims that religion causes all conflict?